Strange. I just tested this on a new site (http://blank-template.wikidot.com) and am immediately a watcher, as was the case for all other sites I'm admin of. Actually, I added a Watchers module before checking the bottom of the page. Maybe that has a side-effect?

It should be up to the admins of individual sites to decide whether a category should be watchable, and by whom; and it should be up to a member to decide wheter he/she wants to watch a page/category/site or not, no matter what his/her status is in the site.

Turning on watching by default is unnecessarily authoritarian, IMHO, and even rude. I'm refraining from inviting new members to any of my sites until this issue is resolved.

Just make the MA auto-watch a site, and everyone else has to explicitly click on the link at the bottom of the page. That means making the default user settings to not auto-watch sites that they become members of (but do watch pages that they create or edit)

@ leiger: That would be the ideal solution. See, a site is like an MA's kid. Although one's best friends may be willing to look after the little brats every now and then, they don't want to know every single detail about their lives — every diaper change, every booger clean-up, etc.

Now, seriously, I want to be able to assign specific responsibilities to different admins, having them looking after a specific category, for instance. That's what they may be willing to watch, if they want so.

@ pieter: For what types of sites do you envision watching as being necessarily automatic?